Armistead L. Boothe

Armistead Lloyd Boothe (23 September 1907-14 February 1990) was a Virginia Democratic legislator who led his party's progressive faction in opposition to Harry F. Byrd's political machine.

Biography
Armistead Lloyd Boothe was born in Alexandria, Virginia in 1907, and he became a Rhodes scholar in 1929 and became a lawyer in 1931. He served as a lawyer for the Department of Justice from 1934 to 1936, as Alexandria City Attorney from 1938 to 1943, as a US Navy intelligence officer during World War II, in the House of Delegates from 1948 to 1955, and in the State Senate from 1955 to 1964. He was classified as a "militant moderate" who opposed Harry F. Byrd's rural conservative Democratic machine, and he supported the creation of a state civil rights commission and the desegregation of public transportation. He also opposed Byrd's policy of "Massive Resistance", which closed down public schools rather than desegregate them, and he attempted to run for the US Senate in 1966 after Byrd's retirement. He proclaimed a progressive agenda which included diplomatic recognition of China, but he lost to Byrd's son Harry F. Byrd Jr. in the party primary; Boothe and the younger Byrd had ironically met each other during their Navy service in World War II. In 1968, he headed Robert F. Kennedy's primary campaign in Virginia, but he ended his legal career a year later after undergoing major heart surgery. He died in 1990.